


bushranger purgatory

by menocchio



Category: True History of the Kelly Gang (2019)
Genre: Ficlet, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:00:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menocchio/pseuds/menocchio
Summary: It's cold at Bullock Creek. It's not just the season, the weather, or their lack of provisions: it's the ghosts of the slain that congregate outside the hut, chasing away all memory of warmth and life.
Relationships: Joe Byrne/Ned Kelly
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	bushranger purgatory

It's cold at Bullock Creek. It's not just the season, the weather, or their lack of provisions: it's the ghosts of the slain that congregate outside the hut, chasing away all memory of warmth and life.

In the pale dawn light when he hasn't slept for a day or more, Joe can see them huddled out beneath the trees. Standing watch, waiting. Some were coppers they'd killed, but many more weren't readily familiar, and he began to fancy maybe they were people they had yet to kill. A soul carries the shadow of its death for long before it comes to pass; it might feel rage enough to haunt the ones responsible.

Joe feels the shadow of his own death these days. He sees Ned's, sometimes; it lives in the sunken skin around his eyes, the carved lines of his face. It bows his shoulders and head. There's no banishing it. Indeed, it lives with them inside the hut. It dares insert itself between their bodies beneath the thin blankets.

Some nights Joe reaches over his shoulder with numb fingers to see if he can push through the shadow and touch Ned, to reassure himself that he is still there. And some of those nights Ned will catch his fingers, bring them up to his mouth, and carefully breathe over them.

His lips are soft on his skin, shockingly warm, and it manages to surprise Joe every time. He keeps expecting Ned's body to have transformed into chilled iron – it almost grieves him that he hasn't. The loss would be easier, if Ned was not still so much himself.

Joe can't leave, and he can't bear to stay, so he tries to live in the world of the past, in that forever-time he had with Ned before they went back to Avenel and the unlucky embrace of the Kelly family.

Once Ned Kelly was just _Ned_ , and before that he was the quiet fellow at the mill who always had a book in hand and was quick to smile when Joe met his eyes across a crowded room.

His smile was surprisingly shy for someone who turned out to be so good a showman in front of groups. But by the time Joe found that out, he'd put it all together, that it wasn't shy so much as conspiratorial. _Are you like me? Do you see this world as I see it?_ Turns out Joe did.

Those were good days for the working man, close to easy as they came. After the mill, Joe mentioned to Ned he heard they were hiring men to haul stone at Burke's over in Collinwood. Around the time that gig wore out its appeal as well as their backs, Ned caught word of a farmer who needed help with shearing; the weather was fine and Joe thought nothing of leaving for the countryside.

They camped out together, throwing their bedrolls down around a fire with the fine pleasure of accepted company. Outside the city, their bond developed even faster. They ate together, and drank together, and days whirled along until their lives were wrapped up tight like the roots of a screw pine stretching up to form a strong, united trunk.

Those were different fires they sat around in those days, and they different men. Joe has the memory of warmth and laughter, which he supposes is better than some ever get. But some nights now he feels that shadow at his back, and he gets to wondering if that shadow was Ned all along.


End file.
